I rejoined the gym for a bit of pre-season training before my season of coastal rowing starts again for 2015. The biggest single thing I have noticed since returning to the gym is that people actually know what they are doing. Gym-goers are using the machines correctly, TRX, CrossFit are the buzzwords and ladies lifting heavy weights is the norm.

Gone are with the days of being prescribed a fitness plan of running on the treadmill for 40 minutes and you were classified as “super fit” or cycling on a bike for 30 minutes and thinking you were great, flexing a few muscles and that’s it, you put in a fantastic workout.

We are witnessing an era of people wanting to ‘learn’ more about exercise, but even more so about nutrition. Hello, I am one of them! I am continually searching for ‘clean eating recipes’ on Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter as well as looking for new ways to train.

Over the past year or so we have experienced an explosion of health and fitness professionals coming into an already crowded market place, there’s a hell of an amount of noise. Some are doing great while others have run away with their egos due to gaining traction and as a result are not connecting with their potential customers.

There’s one guy “The Body Coach” that I would like to focus on from a marketing perspective, he’s doing everything right. From customer acquisition, engagement and retention, he is one to watch on how to successfully market your business to an international audience, regardless of what area of business you are in.

The guy behind the “The Body Coach” is Joe Wicks and he is an online nutrition coach from the UK. He has been featured by The Daily Mail, Men’s Fitness, The Times.. and the whole heep of other media outlets and has recently signed a book deal. He is rocking it!

When I first came across Joe I initially checked his website for further information. This is normally where a lot of businesses fall down, they might be active social media and present themselves very well but but their website can be terrible and that’s where I lose my interest. I always say to people, your website is your shop window, make sure it looks well!

Joe’s website is one of the best I have seen in the industry to date. It’s clean, well presented with nice high-res images and it’s easy to navigate. The Body Coach also encourages you to sign-up for a “free” get lean guide. This is a perfect way to capture email addresses for future marketing. In fact when you sign up to his newsletter you get 14 days of exclusive fat loss advice (call-to-action).

But how did he gain attention of his clients, and the media? The answer is “followers”. The Body Coach UK has 184K followers on Instagram, 25K followers on Facebook, 30.7K on Twitter & 137K views on YouTube. Now that’s impressive! However, Joe did not always have this level of following, in fact a year ago Joe had a very small presence online – but he stuck with it. Day in, day out, he was posting his #leanin15 meals to an empty Instagram account but as time passed people started to follow and to tell their friends and it all took off organically from there.

#leanin15

This is a wonderful marketing campaign. Joe devised his own hashtag that has become his main marketing campaign that is so captivating! Via his Instagram account he pushes out #Leanin15 video meals and shows client results from his 90 Day Fat Loss Plan, it is incredibly engaging and would motivate you into signing up. The videos of his food preparation he prepares are interesting, funny and to the point. See example of his videos here. Through Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter Joe asks participants for a testimonial once they have finished and a before & after picture. From a marketing point of view this is very important because how can you get someone to buy into a program without seeing what you can achieve? The same applies to everything you market, your communication should tell a story.

90 Day SSS Plan

We all know that sticking to a “diet” or lifestyle change is very hard, that’s why Joe has broken it up into 3 different cycles as described on his website:

Cycle 1: HIIT ATTACK – SHIFT YOUR FAT AND IGNITE A NEW FITNESS LEVEL

Cycle 2: SHAPE YOUR PHYSIQUE / INCREASE MUSCLE MASS

Cycle 3: SUSTAIN THE RESULTS EMBRACE A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE

Positioning: By breaking the cycles up into three sections makes the offering of the plan more attractive to potential clients. After the 90 days of the plan you “graduate” from the plan, by using the word “graduate” gives a clear goal for the client to reach that will give them a great sense of achievement. Everyone wants to graduate! Everyone, I am sure prior to joining the 90 SSS Plan wants to see their before and after pictures being pushed out in social media. This is very clever marketing from The Body Coach.

Communication

Joe Wicks is a very busy man, he’s just received a book publishing deal, constantly being interview and even appeared on Sunday Brunch on Channel Four show last Sunday to cook one of his now famous #Leanin15 meals. However, he always makes time for his clients and potential clients via social media. I contacted Joe a number of weeks ago to ask for his permission to feature them on the blog and to ask if I could use some of his images etc, within a few minutes I received a reply saying yes! (see image). This was not the first time I communicated with him either, many times I have engaged with him via Instagram and Facebook and this is from a guy that has hundreds and thousands of followers worldwide. This is where many “well-known” fitness and nutrition ‘experts’ falls down. You have to keep up communicating to encourage and attract new customers and to retain existing ones.

There is no doubt that Joe is a fantastic communicator, I read his client reviews all the time and many of them say “I contacted Joe as I was finding the plan hard and he got back to be and gave me a few words of encouragement to keep going”. A lot of clients say, “if it wasn’t for Joe and his words of advice I would have given up a long time ago”. This proves to me that what he advertises on his website is fact “we believe support is one of the reasons people achieve such amazing results!”

The cost of the plan is £147, you can either pay up-front or via three direct debit payments.

In summery, Joe Wicks AKA The Body Coach is doing a fantastic job marketing his business to not only to an audience in the UK but to the rest of the world, everyone from all types of business can learn something from the way he attracts, engages and retains customers. He has his marketing positioning correct by having a really attractive website, good graphics on his social media profiles, clear and consistent messaging via his social media profiles and his use of video for his #Leanin15 meals are killing it (in a great way). I would love to know what his Facebook stats look like in terms of reach and engagement, no doubt they are impressive!

From all of us here in B*Different, Joe Wicks, congratulations you are ‘different’ and your marketing is super impressive- keep up the good work!